Like a disposable rectal thermometer, that's one more football season tossed to the garbage. What, you didn't realize your yearly checkup is complete!? Sure was! Yeeacch, we're still sick.
But there's good news, everyone!
Oh, are we at least getting better, you wonder? Good question, let's examine the symptoms. Judging by this football game, on the surface, we love excess, and consumerism, and well-padded millionaires (but maybe not padded enough), and all of that adds up to a national mood that suggests we're still stunted, like we're still sort of in the sideshow silent-film era of cultural maturity -- cackling at a tramp getting stuck in the factory gears and dodging a train entering the station without color or sound. Further down though, underneath the dusting of chili powder and tasteless adverts, the Super Bowl, the lowest common denominator for thought-penetration, is the best tool we have to measure where we are, where we've come from, and what still challenges us. And there's a glow starting to crack through, not because of what I'm seeing, but because of what people are saying.
What's unique about the Super Bowl is that it's the mirror we all stare into for a moment -- it's a survey that everybody takes. It's the most popular election of the year, every year, so turn around and ask anybody what they thought of the GoDaddy ad (wretched and upsetting, for so many reasons, more on that later), and you'll be able to have a conversation. Therefore, as bad as the Super Bowl can be, it's good that we're all seeing it be bad, so the biggest victory of all is that we're not accepting what's being spoon-fed into us. That is just a spoon. It is not an airplane!
What did we see when we look at the Super Bowl?
1. Is it just me, or are more people than ever not buying Ray Lewis' self-martyrdom?
Ray Lewis, now-retired Ravens linebacker, beat a double-murder charge in 2000. Then he found God. His passive-aggressive self-martyrdom, stating that he has to live with that memory every day, and that's hard enough without people reminding him that he almost definitely killed some people. He's defensive about it, growing incensed if it's ever brought up. It's fair to assess from the opinions coming in from people across the country that the court of public opinion finds him to be a lying, pitiful shill for his own brand of vindication (Salvation. For Men. By Ray Lewis. Available at Macy's). Trying to hide from his guilt by acting childish and insisting that nobody understands his pain -- these are actions of a damn-desperate man.
This isn't a news-story that networks are re-running. It's the national mood, that we don't accept people, especially wealthy people, staring into a camera and lying. Maybe twelve years ago, we would have let that shit slide, before steroids in baseball, and before the Iraq war, and before Lance Armstrong. Not anymore. We aren't seeing things in black and white sepia-tone anymore.
2. So you're saying that slobbishness is an accepted norm for men? And trashyness for women?
Know what sells Doritos? Bearded fellows wearing makeup and tutus, and goats eating chips, and I think there's some exhausted, eye-rolling woman shaking her head sadly at this man she's associated with. While we're at it, there's web hosting company GoDaddy that just had an Israel supermodel kiss a geeky guy in an ad, and holy shit, this is not daring, nor is it "sexy," female motorsport driver, Danica Patrick.
What's sexy about web hosting? Seems that it isn't, so let's throw some tits at it. Is it sexy that they can pay women enough to appear in a technology ad where they stand, describe what is happening, or tongue some sad-looking guy?
3. The American electrical infrastructure is embarrassing.
A few weird things about the power going out for about half the stadium during the beginning of the 3rd quarter of the game. First, there was awkward, white bread conversation in attempts to fill dead air, proving commentators are talking heads not worth our time. Again, turn to Twitter or any social media channel during this and you'll see better commentary. Second, we had to wait for the NFL to make an official statement as to what has happened regarding the outage. The NFL. Not the guys running the Superdome. Not Mercedes-Benz. The NFL has dibs on the spin for this one. Lotsa creepy.
Lastly, we can all assume that it was likely Beyonce had it written into her tour-rider that she got to eat half of the building's electricity as part of her pittance, like some kind of modern-day pound of flesh.
Paid willingly.
4. It's agreed, we're still capable of being shocked by a truly powerful spectacle, and Beyonce is the proof.
Football games, whatever. America gets a bunch of those every week during the season. Ads? Yeah, we have those, Super Bowl ones are funny and shit, but it's still not amazing. Rote. Pedestrian. Normal.
No, it wasn't the eating, or the professional athletes, or the humorous, short-form visual-poems that the Super Bowl ads have become, it was a twelve-minute, fucking burn-the-earth-down pop-performance the likes of which 99% of the viewing audience had never seen that made the world stop and realize we can still be shaken awake by a boot-stomping and glass-shattering throw-down concert! I'd go on, but you're too busying remembering it now, and you aren't really focusing, so here's an extra half-sentence about how boring a football game is when stacked alongside the other parts of this event, halftime included.
We can still be surprised. The sound is coming on.
5. On the most Twitter-happy day of the year, we have finally, and rightfully, arrived at zero respect for the media industrial complex.
It's a double-edged sword. We trust nobody now. But we all want to talk. And that's good, but it's a transitional moment. We have opinions on how revolting the GoDaddy ad is. We all agree the game itself isn't that interesting. We usually stare at our devices, passive, aiming our feelings and reactions inward, but the Super Bowl gives me hope because we finally are looking up and processing all the information streaming into us, talking, commenting, laughing, and remembering. And it's obvious large companies are watching these channels, just look at the agility from their corporate Twitter feeds following the blackout.
For individuals, this is practice though, just like the Olympics last summer left people feeling irked by the politics of it all, and took to social media to air grievances. NBC-Universal-Kabletown isn't going to budge, but still! This is us taking baby steps at modernity. We all have the tools to communicate how ridiculous the pieces of this whole even are. True, the Super Bowl won't change, the NFL will see of that. We will improve though, if only at raising a mocking middle finger at authority as a sneering first move, demanding color, and sound, and something better from our civilization and from ourselves.
There's hope coming out of an event like this. You do have to assess things personally and consider for a moment that there is some action to take. It's frustrating to see the negativity in the aftermath -- fuck football, fuck ads, fuck the gluttony and the consumerism. Yeah, we agree! The Super Bowl is so bad, and that's good! What are you going to do about it?
-- @Alex Crumb (originally published 2/6/13)
